Staff focus
Samantha Ryan
I am a senior lecturer in law and, since January 2024, the Head of Newcastle Law School. Criminal Law remains my main focus both in terms of teaching and research. My research continues to explore the boundaries of the criminal law, the role of morality in shaping criminal law and how the state, in terms of its criminal justice arm, can control or limit human behaviour. In particular, I remain interested in ensuring that we confine criminal liability to behaviour that truly deserves the serious sanction of criminal punishment. I have explored the appropriate boundaries of criminalisation in my research on criminal liability for the transmission of HIV. I have also explored the relationship between public health and criminal law through my work on HIV and in relation to pregnancy and pre-natal alcohol exposure. As part of my wider research on criminal liability for HIV transmission, I also considered the role of medical health care professionals and more specifically focused on the nature of what constitutes appropriate medical advice, as opposed to legal advice, to people living with HIV. I am currently writing up a piece which explores whether criminal causation has a moral core and am also beginning work with some colleagues in New Zealand looking to identify a contemporary legal, medical and social foundation for the law on infanticide in both jurisdictions.
I first joined the Law School as a lecturer in 2004 (yes before my current undergraduate students were born!!) having previously taught criminal law at Kings College London, University College London and London Metropolitan University. Back then the front door to the Law School was on Windsor Terrace, there were 23 staff members, Ashley Wilton was Head of School, Suzanne Johnson, Joanne Pinnock and Gemma Hayton kept everything running and Cath Dale oversaw the law library or the ‘dungeon’ as it was affectionately known. There were about 150 students in Stage One. For the first couple of years, I taught criminal law, human rights and the law of evidence and spent most weekends preparing overhead projector sheets for lectures and printing handouts. The school was a small, vibrant and welcoming community. Students had a winter ball and a summer graduation ball that staff regularly attended and teaching criminal law across the whole academic year with 7 or 8 seminar cycles meant I really got to know my students.
Much has changed since I first started. We now have 300 students in Stage One, over 50 staff (academic and PS), that blue door on Windsor Terrace is now our back door and we stretch from 19-24 Windsor Terrace. Some of the changes have not been without difficulty. Moving our compulsory lectures out of the law school to central campus – a necessity given student numbers – has created challenges with maintaining a close sense of student community and belonging that sees the Law School building as their disciplinary ‘home’. Semesterisation, meaning compulsory modules like criminal law are now taught across one semester only, has meant we get less time with our students making it harder to get to know them. This is the last year we will have a Law Library operating out of our Law School building as both financial pressures for the University and low student use meant it became impossible to justify its continued operation. The loss of the law library and especially the loss of the heart of the library, with Cath Dale leaving to explore new opportunities, has been a particularly sad change. There are also significant challenges in the Higher Education sector more generally which the Law School has to also navigate – the University funding and fees model in which home fees no longer cover the cost of our educational provision, the often unwelcoming governmental and media discourse around international student recruitment and the overall devaluation of a university education.
And yet many things have stayed the same and the heart of the Law School – one that is dedicated to excellence in terms of research and educational provision, that values its staff and students, that places challenge, wellbeing, compassion and respect at the heart of what we do – that remains the same. Jo and Gemma (Suzanne is enjoying her retirement) are still keeping us all in order with the help of seven other dedicated professional service staff. We are still one of the smallest law schools in the Russell group- as hard as that is to believe. I still teach criminal law and still love doing so. We are determined to make the best of the law library space for our students by converting parts of it into a student community space with a pool table, darts board, couches etc while preserving half of the space for study. We hope that this space will help create a better sense of community not only between students but between staff and students as well.
I continue to try to build and connect our alumni community. I have had the pleasure of hosting a number of reunions over the last few years (class of 1965, 1970 and 1984 and will host the class of 1979 this summer). The Law School also organises alumni events from time to time in Newcastle and in London. These events allow us to share the stories of our most recent Alumni Scholarship recipients (scholarships funded by the generous donations of our Alumni Community). We also enjoy catching up with people and renewing contact and connections. So please watch out for these events and attend them if you can. Make sure to visit us if you are ever back in Newcastle and join our LinkedIn group and promote it among your networks https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4244919/
